Former JFK, LBJ aide remembers years in Washington

"Kennedy was a junior officer in World War II, just as I had been. And it was a really strong pull for young veterans who came back from World War II," he says.

Katzenbach phoned fellow Yale alumnus and future Supreme Court justice Byron White and was told to come to Washington. After being interviewed by Robert Kennedy (who addressed him as "Professor Katzenbach"), he was named to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

Robert Kennedy's time as attorney general is now widely praised, but his appointment was initially ridiculed: He was in his mid-30s, impetuous, inexperienced _ and the president's brother.

"The most serious criticism that Bobby Kennedy could ever make was to say, `That's not very satisfactory, is it?' Boy, that just meant you really screwed up. But he never blew up, never lost his temper," Katzenbach says.

"It's very hard to see how that young man grew up as fast as he did, became as mature as he did in so short a period of time. He gained an awful lot of wisdom."

Victor Navasky, whose "Kennedy Justice" is a history of Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department, says Katzenbach was a "reality anchor," never more weighted than in 1963, when the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa was ready to admit its first two black students and Gov. George Wallace had vowed to "stand in the schoolhouse door" to stop it.

It was an orchestrated confrontation, with Wallace having signaled privately that he would relent. Someone would have to represent the federal government _ Katzenbach. Looking businesslike in a suit and tie, sweating under the Alabama sun, Katzenbach walked up to the school's entrance and handed Wallace a presidential proclamation saying he must obey the law.

With the nation watching on television, including a nervous Robert Kennedy at his office in Washington, Wallace denounced outside interference, while Katzenbach called the governor's tactics a mere "show." The students were peacefully registered.

"Katzenbach was such a smart person; you had to marvel at his ability to operate within the confines of what diplomacy permits," Navasky says. "So if you had to send someone to face down a Southerner in the middle of a school integration crisis, you knew you didn't have to worry about him making some gaffe."

Asked to cite his best times in government, Katzenbach mentions the 1964 Civil Rights Act, when Sen. Clair Engle, a California Republican who had twice undergone brain surgery, was carried into the Senate chamber on a stretcher and cast a key vote that helped ensure the bill's passage. The worst day: President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963.

Katzenbach was at lunch in Washington when he heard the news that Friday afternoon. He had little time to grieve. Vice President Johnson wanted to be sworn in immediately as president. Katzenbach's advice was needed. Did the chief justice of the Supreme Court need to swear in the new president? No, replied Katzenbach, a federal judge could do it. Since no one with Johnson knew the exact oath of office, Katzenbach found a copy of the Constitution and read it over the phone to LBJ aide Jack Valenti.